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A Long History of Political Brawling for Santorum

Matt Solfanelli placed Santorum signs outside Pelletier's Sports in Jaffrey, N.H., in preparation for a visit from the candidate, who has become less combative in this election.Credit
Evan McGlinn for The New York Times

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Rick Santorum loves professional wrestling, and has been thrilled to meet savage icons of the squared circle like Bruno Sammartino, Gorilla Monsoon and Hulk Hogan. He even lobbied for the World Wrestling Federation for a while.

When the former senator, a Pennsylvania Republican, was seeking re-election in 2006, he appeared in a campaign advertisement standing in a ring surrounded by pugilists trading eye gouges and body slams. “It makes more sense to wrestle with America’s problems than with each other,” the candidate said.

That ad, though, concludes with Mr. Santorum decking one of the wrestlers with a brutal elbow smash — a move that illustrates his no-holds-barred political style. People in both parties over the years have accused him of hotheaded name-calling, reliance on immature antics and attempts to reduce politics to steel-cage matches between people cast as heroes or heels.

“He would attack people in a smug way that was harder-edged and more insulting than was necessary, said Mark Salter, the former chief of staff to Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, adding that lawmakers in both parties shared this view. “He was a bully who was not a potent enough force to be a bully.”

From the start of a legislative career that included two terms in the House and two in the Senate, Mr. Santorum earned a reputation for throwing haymakers with no regard for custom, sacred cows or his own newcomer status. And in seeking his party’s presidential nomination — he pulled off a virtual tie for first place in Iowa — he still knows how to throw fists, as evidenced by a donnybrook Thursday with a group of students at College Convention 2012 in Concord, N.H., in which he seemed to draw a parallel between same-sex marriage and polygamy. “So anyone can marry anyone else?” he asked rhetorically. “So anybody can marry several people?” Several members of the crowd booed.

At other appearances, Mr. Santorum has regularly cast President Obama as “a president who has done more to divide this country than any president in recent history.”

But in general, Mr. Santorum has tried to be more conciliatory in this election (a “good guy,” in wrestling parlance). He has not attacked Republican rivals in debates or campaign ads, he said — mostly true, although he has had almost no money to buy any ads. He spoke of working with Democrats in the Senate and winning elections in Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania. He urged compromise when possible. “The American people expect us to act like adults,” he said at a campaign stop in Perry, Iowa, on Monday, “not spoiled children.”

Former colleagues from his years in Washington, though, still remember his belligerence. One of Mr. Santorum’s first acts in the Senate was to attack Mark Hatfield, an Oregon Republican, for opposing a balanced-budget amendment that Mr. Santorum advocated, even suggesting that Mr. Hatfield, a veteran lawmaker, be sacked as chairman of the Appropriations Committee.

As a senator, Mr. Santorum bemoaned the lack of “statesmanship” in the chamber, which many of his colleagues found particularly rich given his own decorum-busting statements (he referred to President Bill Clinton in speeches as “that guy”), tactics (as a freshman, Mr. Santorum held a “Where’s Bill?” placard on the Senate floor to demand that Mr. Clinton submit a balanced budget) and refusal to apologize (he called Senator Robert Torricelli a liar and explained it away as merely “calling a spade a spade”). He acquired the nickname Senator Slash, which could also work as a pro wrestling character.

The late Senator Robert C. Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat and one of the most devout traditionalists in the chamber, was appalled by Mr. Santorum. After the younger man accused Mr. Clinton of speaking “bald-faced untruths,” Mr. Byrd delivered a blistering speech in which he derided his colleague’s “insolence” and “rude language” and suggested that Mr. Santorum might be better-suited to “an alehouse or beer tavern.” He lamented that he had lived long enough “to see Pygmies stride like colossuses” in the august chamber.

Mr. Santorum’s antics in the budget debate inspired Senator Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska, to make a semifamous remark that “santorum” was in fact a Latin word for an anatomical vulgarity. Mr. Santorum complained, and Mr. Kerrey clarified his remark.

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“I said that in fact ‘santorum’ might not be the actual word in Latin,” Mr. Kerrey explained in an interview. “But that he was behaving like that word.” Mr. Kerrey added that he later came to admire Mr. Santorum for his intelligence and tenacity on issues.

Mr. Santorum is particularly fond of canine imagery. His most famous pooch-evoking turn came during a 2003 interview with The Associated Press in which he was discussing marriage and mentioned homosexuality, saying it is not “man on boy, man on dog.” He once compared Tom Daschle, then the Democratic Senate leader, to a “rabid dog,” and was one of a group of Republican senators who in 2002 called a press conference featuring a pack of bloodhounds to “sniff out” any legislation that the Democratic majority had produced.

A Roman Catholic, Mr. Santorum is drawn to the most divisive issues of the “culture wars”: abortion, euthanasia, gay rights and the role of faith in government institutions. He often uses incendiary language in fighting for his causes. He has compared homosexuality to incest and called the protection of traditional marriage “the ultimate homeland security issue.”

“Rick does tend to take on issues that are controversial with passion and enthusiasm and that might turn people off,” said the former Senate Republican leader Trent Lott, who supports Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination but describes Mr. Santorum as a close friend.

He said that he watched Mr. Santorum closely in Iowa and that he had become more measured. “We change as we grow older,” Mr. Lott said.

In his appearances across Iowa in recent months, Mr. Santorum has said that he was willing to work with his ideological counterparts, citing Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, as an ally on several issues.

But the two lawmakers were at odds in the late 1990s during a debate over the procedure that opponents call partial-birth abortion. It was an issue that Mr. Santorum, the father of an infant son who died two hours after his premature birth in 1996, cared deeply about.

In the debate, Mr. Santorum deployed oversize pictures of fetuses and spoke of how a doctor “brutally kills” a fetus “by thrusting a pair of scissors into the back of its skull and suctioning its brains out.” He invited into the visitors’ gallery a 5-year old girl who had survived a serious in-utero condition that had, according to Mr. Santorum, made her mother a candidate for the late-term procedure. Ms. Boxer objected, saying it was “ exploitive to have a child present.”

Ms. Boxer, who declined to comment for this article, has criticized her former colleague for his tendency to become so “harsh and personal” in his Senate dealings.

That is essentially Mr. Santorum’s central critique of Mr. Obama, who he says “goes after Republicans by name” and responds to reasonable criticisms of his policies “by questioning people’s character.” He cites Mr. Obama as the reason Washington has become so divided. “This president has poisoned the well.”

Correction: January 10, 2012

An article on Saturday about Rick Santorum’s no-holds-barred political style described incorrectly an event in which he engaged in a heated discussion about same-sex marriage. It was a nonpartisan gathering called College Convention 2012 — not a group called “College Republicans.” And because of an editing error, the article also misstated part of the name of a professional wrestling organization for which Mr. Santorum once lobbied. It is the World Wrestling Federation, not the World Wrestling Foundation.

A version of this article appears in print on January 7, 2012, on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: The Santorum of 2012 Comes From a Long History of Political Brawling. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe